The Land Rover blues and the Big Five cruise: Day 28 – 31

Our room at Lion Sands!

A playful cub.

Sundowners on the game drive.

A big buff.

We checked in at Land Rover Nelspruit to give good ol’ Grace a full medical before crossing any more borders. Shane and the team were really great, and made up some brownie points after our shambolic ordeal with Land Rover head office. Turned out that Grace needed some attention, so we left her in their capable hands and each set off to visit our Aunties…Jazz and Robbie in Carolina, and Tom and I in White River.  After some delicious home cooked food, we all met up again to head off to Lion Sands – a real treat given to us by my aunt and uncle, Nick and Jean More, who own the lodge. Seeing as Grace was getting fixed, Nick loaned us his car…we upgraded from a 2003 Defender to a 2009 Discovery – very comfortable and smart (leather seats and awesome sound system), but we missed the banging and rattling of our Defender.

Lion Sands is a 5 star family owned lodge started roughly 10 years ago. They are also looking to get involved with supporting Open Africa and the quest to become self-sustainable by starting a ‘Safari Route’. All four of us had never experienced such luxury and lavishness! We were escourted to our rooms and opened the door to see a greeting message spread across the king-sized beds with reeds and leaves reading “Welcome Tom and Nikki”. We lay there in awe and kind of giggling giddily at how lucky we felt to be there.

We enjoyed a meal for royalty on the deck looking over on to Kruger’s side of the reserve and explored the bar and lounging areas. Just after high tea at half-past three, we headed off on a game drive. We tracked down leopard in the thickets, bumped into some temperamental bull elephants on musth and enjoyed a civilized GnT and wine as the sun went down. It was a Boma buffet dinner at tables around the bonfire with gas lanterns, blankets and hot-water bottles waiting on our seats to warm us up. We went to sleep more than satisfied and still relishing in the glamour of the experience.

In the morning we woke up with the sun rising, and went on our second game drive to discover a mother lioness and her playful cubs, white rhino grazing on the side of the road, and a herd of buffalo lazing the morning sun (always with that curious twinkle in their eye). The Big 5 in less than 24-hours…what a spoil!

We checked out after a delicious breakfast and headed back to White River to finish up with some admin before continuing to Mozambique. A huge thank you goes to our aunty Jean and tannie Sanet for letting us stay and for running around after us while we were carless! We finally fetched Grace, who’s engine was purring beautifully and exterior sparkling after getting a clean…and made our way to the Komatipoort border to cross into Mozambique.